Dick Darling's Money; or, The Rise of an Office Boy; and Other Stories

by Self-made man; Various

"I'll warm up something," said Nellie, "while May will make you a cup of tea."

The girls prepared him a meal and after eating it he turned in with the others. His story was in the morning papers, and the first inkling that Mr. Bacon, his manager and the clerks got of it was through the morning journals. Dick appeared at the store on time, and in advance of the other employees, and as they arrived they gathered around him and bombarded him with questions. He satisfied their curiosity as well as he could, and when the manager turned up he took the boy in his room and asked him to give him the whole story. Then Mr. Bacon appeared and Dick was closeted with him for half an hour.

The manager in the meanwhile had communicated with the police, who told him they were working on the case, but so far without results. During the day one of the people who lived opposite the house where the adventure happened to Dick, after reading the story in the paper, reported to the police that he had seen an expressman take two trunks and two suitcases out of the house at about half-past eight on the evening before. By that time the police had learned the name of the owner of the house and its contents, and learned from his representative that Patterson had leased the place for a year, giving certain references. He had paid only one month's rent—the first. The second month would be due in a few days, thereby showing that Patterson and his accomplice had occupied the house but one month. The servant had been found in the house and interviewed by a policeman. She was very much astonished to learn of the character of the parties who had engaged her as a cook and general domestic.

She had been with them since they took possession, and thought them very nice people, though she saw little of the man. Under close questioning she called to mind many things which the detectives regarded as suspicious. In the course of a day or two some of Patterson's operations came to light, and the police picked up many clues concerning his movements while he was living at the house.

It was three days before the expressman who carried the trunks to the ferry was found, for he had been paid to keep a stiff upper lip, and had tried to keep out of the way, then the authorities got wise to the fact that the guilty couple had gone out of the city via the Pennsylvania road. By following the clue, the pair was traced to Pittsburg, and from there to Cincinnati, thence to St. Louis, where they were caught and brought back to New York.

Dick was called on to identify them, which he readily did. As he felt a certain gratitude toward the little blonde woman who had refused to lay him out with the slungshot, he would liked to have made matters as easy for her as possible; but there was no getting around her part of the business, and so she was held for grand larceny, and criminal participation in the other operations which were brought against the man who was supposed to be her husband. In the end she was sent to Auburn, while Patterson got a long sentence at Sing Sing, but Mr. Bacon recovered none of his loss, not even the diamond ring.

The merchant did not blame Dick for the loss of his goods. It was clear that the game had been too slickly worked for the boy to have acted differently than he had done. On the whole, Mr. Bacon thought his young clerk a lucky boy to have escaped with his life. Dick spent his third Christmas week with the Masons, and made further progress in the good opinion of the gentleman, his wife and the sister-in-law, and more firmly established himself in the heart of Madge. He visited the gypsy camp again and told Miriam of the peril he had passed through in connection with the Pattersons.

"Did I not tell you to beware of a tall, dark man and a short, light woman?" said the gypsy queen.

"By George, you're right! Do you know, that fact has never occurred to me till this moment," admitted Dick. "The man was tall and dark, and the woman was a small blonde. I was lucky to fare no worse than I did."

"It was the benign influence of your favorable planets that saved you from death. How old are you?"